Speaking (Even More) of Antinatalists

It’s not just the New Republic that thinks climate change is a reason not to have kids. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently made the news by asking, “Is it still OK to have kids in the face of climate change.” She asked the question to drum up support for the the “Green New Deal,” the climate change mitigation resolution that she recently introduced in the US House.

The American Action Forum recently estimated the cost of implementing Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ Green New Deal, and, as Bloomberg noted yesterday, implementation “won’t come cheap.” According to AAF, the total cost over the next ten years will be between $51 trillion and $93 trillion.

Bloomberg also noted that, “The [Green New Deal] resolution itself … points to a major report on global warming released by the United Nations last October that says catastrophic climate change could cost more than $500 billion annually in lost economic output in the U.S. by 2100.” That’s a lot of money, of course, but what the Bloomberg story fails to note is that estimated annual cost of unmitigated climate change 80 years from now is actually be less than the estimated annual cost of implementing the New Green Deal today. In short, if the AAF and UN reports are both correct, the Green New Deal is a very bad deal indeed!